Posts Tagged New Author Advice
Quotes of the Week
Posted by Allen Jones in Quotes on July 1st, 2009
The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.
– John Cheever
Longing on a large scale is what makes history. This is just a kid with a local yearning but he is part of an assembling crowd, anonymous thousands off the buses and trains, people in narrow columns tramping over the swing bridge above the river, and even if they are not a migration or a revolution, some vast shaking of the soul, they bring with them the body heat of a great city and their own small reveries and desperations, the unseen something that haunts the day – men in fedoras and sailors on shore leave, the stray tumble of their thoughts, going to a game.
– Don Delillo
Baseball, Don Delillo, John Cheever, New Author Advice, Quotes
A Few Thoughts on Book Covers
Posted by Allen Jones in New Author Advice on May 8th, 2009
New authors are often surprised, working with a publishing house for the first time, by how little control they actually have over the final product. It’s their book, after all. Shouldn’t they have a certain amount of say-so over cover design? Type design? Sales and marketing? Alas (or not, depending on your perspective), it’s the rare publisher indeed who allows an author any meaningful input with regard to packaging or advertising (self-promotion, of course, is another matter — the more the author pushes his or her own book, the more the publisher will appreciate it…and the more likely they’ll be to offer another contract).
It’s almost impossible for an author to negotiate a contract that allows for control over cover treatment. But it is quite normal for an author to be allowed a voice. They can quite reasonably ask that a cover be run by them for feedback. (If this isn’t a part of the initial contract, you should ask for it during negotiations. The publisher will almost always grant the author the right to make non-binding suggestions.)
A recent website passed along to me by friends — The Book Cover Archive — provides an invaluable tool for new authors. You can browse books by genre, publisher, designer, etc., finding those titles that are most like the book you’re publishing (or maybe they just have drop-dead covers that you especially appreciate). It always helps the dialogue if authors can approach their publishers with examples, in hand, of what they would like to see in their book. That sort of feedback, so long as it is done politely and without ultimatum is always appreciated.
Always be aware, however, that there will always be internal company politics of which you aren’t aware. If the editor has a rocky relationship with the art director or designer, or if the designer has recently gained favor with the publisher and can do no wrong, or if the art director is especially intractable (and on, and on), there may not be much you can do. Best to offer your suggestions, with appropriate caveats, and then step back to let the process run its course. No one ever, ever, ever wants to be labeled a “difficult” author.
Art directors and designers are the (mostly) unsung heroes of book publishing. Their work populates our homes and covers our walls. Some of their covers are as familiar to us as the photos in our albums. Yet very few of us know more than a name or two. Of the designers represented in the Book Cover Archive, I particularly appreciate the work of rockstar designer Chip Kidd, as well as Henry Sene Yee and Darren Haggar.
